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Tea Party supports Freedom from government and lawyers how? They are a another tool to get the useful idiots to vote in policies that hurt themselves. Ask those folks about their stance on gay marriage and watch how fast they support government intrusion into people private lives.

Idiots like you often confuse "smaller government" with "no government".

Government provides the legal context for property ownership. That's good. Government also interferes with your use of that land. That's bad.

Just Google "Oregon, man jailed for storing rainwater". Yes, Government is telling this guy that rain water that falls from his roof cannot be stored in a pond his land. In fact, they are putting him in jail for doing so. That's the state government. If he was able to do it, you can be sure that th

There's a difference between collecting water than runs off your house and putting up a 20 foot damn to create a reservoir [kpic.com] and stop water flowing into the local river. What would you do if you were down stream and your river dried up?

Don't forget he had 3 of them on his property.. Stocked with bluegill, a boat dock, etc. and this creek is a tributary of the Rouge River, a designated "Wild and Scenic River".. Not only was he keeping the water, he was blocking fish from going upstream for spawning..

Nice strawman.Nice use of Libs, when you have no idea of the political leaning of the persons you are speaking of. Plus the personal attacks tell us the reason you are so mad is because the world is big and confusing to people with such tiny brains like yourself.

I wish the govt...state AND federal, would get out of the marriage business.

What the states and feds should do, is allow for, and enforce across state lines...civil contracts..between two or more of ANY sexual preference, etc. This should be the ONLY legal binding contract there is.

If someone in this relationships also wants the "marriage" moniker on their relationship, let them get a church to do this....but merely having a church blessed marriage, would not hold any legal binding bonds....that is the civil contract part offered by the govt.

Let that civil contract between 2 or more people, take care of all the inheritance, insurance...etc....and that would be the same for any group of people wanting such a legal relationship, and should do away with all this controversy of marriage.

Let's put marriage back in the church where it resides, and out of Govt hands where it causes controversy. The Govt is there to help enforce contracts...let's put the govt back to work doing what it is supposed to do in this case.

If a state chooses to recognize a contract between two opposite sex, two same sex, or 3 same or mixed sex partners its the sates business, not the federal government.

Does the Federal government give tax benefits to married people? If so, they need a definition of "married". That definition could be "as legally defined in your state" but I don't know enough about the US Constitution to know if it would be legal to have the Federal government tax people differently based on which state they live in.

Is it a revealed work or intelligently designed? I think we can rule out being intelligently designed. That leaves us with a revealed work. Also the deletionists have made a nice apocrypha of wiki pages. So. GOP was taken over by religious nuts awhile back and they like a revealed work, surprise surprise.

Its entirely possible that whichever candidate will get the nod had his wikipedia fixed up a couple of months ago, to avoid notice of this. The other candidates fixing theirs up might just be window dressing in case there is a problem with the first candidate and they need a replacement.

Lots of things are more controversial than a particular politician (e.g. pretty much anything about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict). With politicians' pages, the New York Times actually ran an article on a Hillary Clinton supporter that was "protecting" her page from criticism by reverting any negative edits he could find.

It's not impossible, but if you look at the editors who've made most of the edits, they're fairly active, longstanding Wikipedians who edit lots of things. A more likely explanation is that the causality is the other way around: they've heard the speculation about Rob Portman and Marco Rubio from the news, just like the rest of us have, and went over to see what shape the Wikipedia article is in. Some out of personal interest, some out of political interest, but probably not with inside information.

The numbers are even worse for the Republicans (347-191) accoring to Tannenbaum's "Rasmussen fee" page. Here he filters out Fox's polling company which has questionable polling practices. This polling group has consistently polled in favor of Republicans. From electoral-vote.com: "Silver analyzed 105 polls released by Rasmussen Reports and its subsidiary, Pulse Opinion Research, for Senate and gubernatorial races in numerous states across the country. The bottom line is that on average, Rasmussen's polls we

A whole lot can happen between now and November, where the real fight hasn't started yet in terms of Obama vs. Romney yet. I certainly wouldn't count out Romney from winning, but I will admit that at the moment the contest is up to Obama to lose by doing something really stupid.

I really like these charts [electoral-vote.com], particularly the ones covering previous elections. What seemed to galvanize voters in 2004 was the decided lack of leadership on the part of John McCain, or at least a feeling that Obama could do a bette

Every time I read crap like this (or equivalent crap from the partisan Right), I feel just a little more inclined against a broad-based popular vote. Sadly, the alternatives all tend to be worse even than uninformed, blinkered partisans voting.

Everything I read from actual economists indicates that the stimulus worked in that the economy would have been much worse off if it hadn't been done. The stimulus didn't instantly fix everything, but it prevented things from truly entering Great Depression level suckage. I am personally much better off now than I was four years ago, and while Obama is disappointing in many areas, Romney outright terrifies me.

My disappointment with the stimulus is that during the first year or so, Obama could have done a wh

The link is interesting, but the underlying analysis shows that both sources predict the same outcomes in each state. The difference appears to be that Nate Silver doesn't simply use a "winner takes all" model, he weights the votes based on probabilities of winning states. I didn't see any explanation of the methodology in my two minute visit, but doing a state by state comparison of maps showed that each one was predicted the same in each model. Nate's might be a bit more realistic because the more states

Make sure to check out Nate's histogram under the "Electoral Vote Distribution" on the right about 4 or 5 panels down, which is kind of jaw-dropping IMO. His most probably outcome right now is Obama with about 335 electoral votes(!), which is a huge landslide.

Based on how I read the Twelfth and Twenty-second Amendments, Bill Clinton is ineligible to become Vice President because he is ineligible to become President on account of having twice been elected to a four-year term as President.

Really competent, intelligent, honest people cannot run for political office. This is especially true of the presidency. For many, many years, the choice has only been who is least destructive. That keeps getting harder as the quality continually drops and the corruption rises. We are manipulated into thinking we have a choice but we don't. Anyone have any suggestions for a decent country to move to?

The VP's two jobs don't happen very often but when they occur it's pretty important. I wish there was more of a primary selection process for VP rather than the candidate's behind the scenes political machinations as recommended by their overpaid consultants. If the president is incapacitated then we get the VP, like it or not, who did not have to go through the primary process and be selected by the party members as the president was.

He should select Ron Paul. It would consolidate the Republican base. On the other hand, if Ron Paul runs as an independent in just a few swing states (e.g., Texas), Ron will give the election to Obama. As VP, Ron could be effectively managed, as Kennedy did with Johnson and Reagan did with Bush. Remember what Mr. Gates used to say, "keep your friends close and your enemies closer."

However, I am talking about Mitt, a man with few political instincts. Therefore, he will pick Portman as an electoral hedge, because Rob is from the critical swing state of Ohio.

Those voters will already vote for the Republican candidate. Ron Paul could not carry Texas or any other such state. I am not sure why would even think he could, other than the fevered dreams of false libertarians.

Many Libertarians are committed to voting third party rather than Romney. Supposedly if Paul joined with Romney, that could pull some of those votes in and help prevent a spoiler. It's all academic though.

Ummmm . . . hate to break it to you, but Texas is about as far from a swing state as possible. It is as predictably (as in, double-digit lead) red as New York, Maryland, and California are blue. Texans haven't voted for a Democrat for President since 1976. See http://www.270towin.com/states/Texas [270towin.com]

First, the political damage is not that huge. Second, it's very likely that Romney has paid little income tax, though quite large amounts of other taxes, given that most of his income is from investments, which are taxed as capital gains. So given the current media's biases, what are the odds that, if that's correct, people will hear the full story, vice just hearing "Romney paid no taxes"?

Also, as an aside, I think Reid is traveling a dangerous road. Do we really want our political leaders decided on bas

Reid is going down the path the birthers laid for him. I find it funny that now the republicans suddenly have a problem with people calling for what should be public records.

It is not a good thing when either tribe does it, but this is what tribalism leads too.

Personally the fact that investment income is taxed at such a lower rate is something the public needs to hear about. This is why you hear of CEOs taking $1 salaries, because they prefer to be paid in ways that avoid the taxes on income. Reid's current course of action is not how to have that discussion though.

They shouldn't have to be, but when you run for political office, there's a tacit understanding that you no longer have the degree of privacy you would have if you were just Joe Q. Citizen. Sure, you can refuse to show your tax records at that point, but your opponents and the electorate are also free to draw whatever conclusions they want from that.

The underlying point here is that political damage doesn't have to be logical, rational or, hell, even right. But damage is damage nonetheless. A lot of Republicans are really getting concerned that the longer Romney refuses the more people will assume he has something nasty to hide, so that even if it is nothing more than a bit embarrassing when and if it does come to light, he will have already put too many holes in the hull of his campaign.

Here's my advice for anyone running for public office. If you value your privacy, don't bother. They are mutually exclusive.

Make the taxes on investment income far more progressive than the normal tax code and suddenly it doesn't effect any of the average folks you're trying to protect. Oh but wait, this whole "increased taxes are bad for everyone" motif is just a ruse, so you were being hypothetical and not seeking an actual answer that would solve problems. Sorry, carry on.

Reid will not comment on the matter unless he his on the floor of the Senate. This is because Reid is protected from being sued for telling a lie as long as he is on the Senate floor. You wont see him repeating his lies on the Sunday shows because he can be personally sued for making false statements.

Mitt's father was questioned too when there was a chance he might become the nominee because the Romney's were from Mexico. By extension Mitt himself released his birth certificate to Reuters because questions arouse.

I'm sure Reid has inside knowledge -- after all he IS a high-ranking member of the LDS Church and has many friends who would know more about the Romney situation. Obviously he can't have access to the tax returns themselves (that would be a felony) so he can't produce any "evidence" but John McCain (who HAS seen the returns from when Romney was being considered for VP in 2008) has stayed mum on the subject which strongly implies that he knows a little more than we do.

Well, remember McCain saw something like 10+ years of Romney's tax returns during his vice-presidential vetting and decided that Sarah Palin was a better candidate for vice-president. Just think about that for a bit, Palin a better "heartbeat from the president" than Romney 4 yrs ago. What has Romney done since except campaign more for president and now hide his tax returns from public? I've read reports how there's a good chance that he DIDN'T pay taxes particularly in 2009 because of the stockmarket dive and even McCain hasn't seen those tax returns.

I want to know what he's hiding personally, and I think the issue probably will "swiftboat" Romney if he doesn't go ahead and release them ASAP...

Yes. No one is saying Romney illegally paid no income taxes, but it's quite easily for him to have paid virtually no taxes relative to his income. We know Romney's IRA is an enormous $100 million + (given IRA contribution limits would either make him the greatest investor in the world or there's something unorthodox going on).

What's likely happened is that he put his shares of the Bain Capital LLC, which he was the sole shareholder, into his IRA at an arbitrary and very low value (since it's a private compa

First, the political damage is not that huge. Second, it's very likely that Romney has paid little income tax, though quite large amounts of other taxes, given that most of his income is from investments, which are taxed as capital gains.

Wrong. They never cash in their investments, so they never pay that tax. They leverage their assets for cheap loans. Jobs was a master of this, as is Ellison.

This got modded flamebait while the post it responded to is +1. I've been noticing this recently - posts that seem to come from conservatives are getting down-modded a lot. I'm wishing I had done some meta-moderating. When I had the chance. I'm not getting the invitations to do so - perhaps because I've recently been getting negative mods for conservative comments.

I suspect their exact words were, "If you think you can do a better job at running this university on such a small budget...".

Besides, I think it's perfectly apt. It gives him a chance to put his money where his mouth is. If he succeeds, then American universities are horribly inefficient. If he fails, the Republican education policy will be unimpeachably shown as an abject failure.

Or he will succeed in saving money, and destroy the value of those degrees at the same time.

You know like all those advertised on daytime TV private colleges. They make tons of money, and sell degrees that are totally worthless. Which is pretty much the perfect outcome in the mind of any politician.

Being selected as a VP candidate gives that politician instant name recognition in presidential politics. Sometimes this is enough to make them an early contender for a presidential nomination in the next election (Edmund Muskie, Walter Mondale, Sarah Palin) or gives them a building block for later campaigns (FDR, Bob Dole). This is somewhat of a modern phenomenon. The age and performance of the candidate and the strength of the field are certainly factors.